Poet, Author, Waitress

The Blood of Trees

Did you learn to lust for
the blood of trees,
sapped from blighted limbs,
the litheness of leaves still
falling
in the unhasty way that trees fall?
Did you let them grow
only to marvel more greatly
at the size of the force
needed to fell them,
or were the bared teeth of your saws
merely bad harmony
to the pathetic sound your fists made
against the trees that you wanted toppled?

Did you see them like spirits,
reaching with their skeletal fingers toward
an unflinching creator?

If they had skins, they might have
looked like dead elephants,

but they were trees,
silent and patient,
bleeding for the amusement and glory
of insignificant men.